The Frozen Hearts
by Tikitorch559
Summary: It isn't perfect. They fight, they struggle, they strive, but it's their happily ever after and neither is willing to give that up. Drabbles into the life of Draco/Ginny with a different take on Draco. Inspired by deleted story: Heroes and Thieves


1. They meet on the train, when she runs him over in the narrow corridor. He does not know who she is. They don't speak. She's too shy. He's too stunned the girl had audacity to treat him in such fashion. After the insanity of the chamber, after all those who came inches away from death through petrification, long after he matches the name Weasley with her face, he finds her crying in a hidden corrider. He sits down next her. He does not have any warm touches, any comforting words, but it's enough.

2. He approaches her hallway, surrendered by Neville and the rest of her fellow rebellious friends. He tries to warn her, trying to sound as casual as possible, that she won't be as lucky as to get Hagrid for detention next time. She implies him a coward. He mentions he just considers the sanity of first years more important than petulant pranks, and leaves with her furious stare following him.

3. People consider Ginny is outgoing, speaks what's on her mind. Only she knows the things she holds back. When even Draco cannot hear, lying asleep on their bed next to her, she hesitantly admits in a hushed whisper, "I love you." She wishes she could say it more often, louder, but her fragile heart won't allow it. She has long considered it her most frustrating flaw.

4. For every day of the first six years in Hogwarts, he find a set of robes folded neatly on his dresser. A daily habit of Dobby's going back to his youth. When he finds it missing one morning, he lies in bed the next few hours, feeling something he cannot not quite place.

Months later, he knocks on the cottage, requesting to visit Dobby's grave. Fleur escorts him to the backyard, and he kneels before the stone. **Here lies a free elf**. It is not enough. Here lies his caretaker, his parent. He has placed that feeling now. It's the loss of family. When Draco and Ginny's relationship becomes public, everyone is startled when Fleur supports it trepidation.

5. He spies Harry tossing a black book to his father. He finds it later in his father's study, with **Property of ****Tom Riddle** printed across the back. He makes the connection. He feels sick.

6. Draco never calls her Ginny or Gin, only Ginerva. It reminds her how different he is from most of her family.

7. Fleur and Draco get coffee together at least once month. The family, including Bill or Ginerva don't really understand their bond. Both Fleur and Draco never reveal the strange feeling of being alone in such a lively and family.

8. He has been taught to consider muggles as ants, worthless, insignificant. That is why he loses his respect for his father after hearing of his position as the chief muggle torturer for the Dark Lord. After all, only trash spend so much effort and gain so much pleasure from torturing trash. Draco has killed people in the war, people he considers below him, but he has learned from his father. He does not torture, he does not dwell, and his kills might, at times, be brutal, but they are always quick.

9. He sees the Carrows' making another public debacle, torturing some other poor upity first year that Neville has roped in to his cause. Then when Ginerva starts yelling, taking the blame and attention of the kid, he sees red. When people recollect the incident, they say Draco obliterated the Carrows because they insulted his family. They are wrong, that's just what he says.

10. Noone ever knew that the second person in Ginny's family to accept their relationship was Ron Weasley. Other than Fred, Ron is the most desolate remainder of the war in the Weasley family, more so than George's ear. They still remember with fond nostalgia of his quick temper, his lack of tact, his simplicity, but war, age, and heartbreak had tempered him, replaced petty belligerence with an acumen and composure that still continues to startle his family, including Draco.

One day, to while away some time before dinner, Draco challenges Ron to a game of chess, upon which Ron proceeds to a thorough victory, his amorphous and freestyle strategies easily tearing through Draco's structured, well-documented techniques. Ron begins warming up to Draco as he keeps requesting another, despite getting crushed each and every time, though Ron supposes he should not be surprised, one needs such ingrained stubbornness to deal with Gin on a daily basis. When Draco brings him a bottle of scotch upon the eve of Harry and Hermione's wedding, Ron takes this as a way to ease everyone into his public acceptance of Draco and Gin's relationship.

11. The interactions between Lucius and his son more or less stay the same after Lucious is released from Azkaban on Harry's mercy, short and curt. Yet Lucius feels the change, he recognizes the distain hidden within apathy in their conversations replacing the thinly veiled adulation from Draco's childhood. It was after all his own patented undertone when dealing with undesirables. To date, Lucius has never commented on this, never crossed the distance between them, but he knows he's lost his son and his biggest regret is that he no idea how to attempt to repair the damage. Lucius also never mentions to Draco about his relationship Ginvera. Draco believes his father biting back insults, but Lucius observes how happy, how alive Draco has become, and just doesn't know how to give voice to an approval to a relationship with a Weasley.

12. People ask him how it felt to kill Bellatrix, his aunt, his family. She was constant proof of the insanity that lay dormant inside him, the same blood flowing through both their veins. He craved to get rid of the remainder the moment she escaped from Azkaban, and, when the time came, it was effortless. Not the duel, of course, but looking her in the eye and finishing her, that was as natural as breathing. When he tells Ginvera this, of his fears of his heritage, she kisses his nose, places her forehead against his, and tells him that the consequences of being her boyfriend are far more potent.

13. If he has to pinpoint what he hated most about Ginvera and Harry's relationship in his sixth year, it is how Harry makes her small. It irked him that Harry left her behind to fight the Dark Lord, how he did not consider her his equal, worthy of his trust in her competence, but the fact that she actually accepted this was what truly galled Draco. He also remembers how tiny Ginvera looked when she realized their breakup was not temporary, when her heart shattered as she learned of how Harry fell in love with Hermione during their time on the time on the run. He isn't one for such sweeping declarations, but when she finally agrees to go on a date with him, he vows to never make her small again.

14. Her brothers wonder how Ginny got so good flying, when, as far back as they could remember, their mother constantly made her stay by her side all day, indoors, as she went about completing household chores. They don't know that she sneaked out at nights desperately trying get into the broom shed, that Ron caught her one day, picked the lock on the door, and taught her to fly. When Ron loudly declares his blessing on her new relationship, Ginny laughs it off and never mentions how it meant the world to her.

15. Ginny, almost religiously, gets a solid night's sleep, skiving off work if she was up late with Draco. When Draco affectionately notes this, she simply smiles, averts her gaze to the din and clatter of the restaurant, and sips her wine. He does not understand, he cannot. Those innocent faces she almost killed her first year continue haunt her waking hours, so many years later. She does not sleep for rest, it is beyond her reach. She sleeps to dream.

16. Draco sees how much Ron loves Hermione. He sees Ron's heart breaking when the happy couple finally announce their engagement. He sees his pain when Ron smiles, perfectly, and congratulates them.

"He's handling it better far better than I though." Hermione whispers to Harry.

He sees how both Hermione and Harry don't realize how Ron's becoming himself before Ginvera became his girlfriend. He catches Ginvera's worried eye and knows she sees it too.

17. Ron and Daphne meet when Draco invites him along to their regular dinners. Ron and Daphne do not get along perfectly. They don't bicker like the very well-known Ron and Hermione spats, they trade dry remarks and retorts. Draco finds it cute. He is well aware of how soft he's become. When he informs Ginvera he plans to force them into a date, her eyes sparkle. She informs him she is going to help.

18. Daphne doesn't nag. Ron no longer snogs in public. In fact, Ginny thinks that other than her parents, Ron and Daphne are the most subtle about their physical relationship in her entire family. Yet, when she sees them lounging on the sofa, Ron with his head on her lap, eyes closed, Daphne with one hand paging a book propped on the armrest, and the other running through his hair, it feels so intimate, she's forced to avert her eyes.


End file.
